After Joe Paterno fired, crowd erupts at Penn State (VIDEO)
Students and those in the community fill the streets and react after football head coach Joe Paterno was fired during the Penn State Board of Trustees Press Conference, November 9, 2011, in State College, Pennsylvania.
Crowds of students and community members poured into the streets of downtown State College, Pennsylvania, Wednesday night after the news that Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno and the university president had been fired.
The Associated Press reported that more than a thousand students gathered at the university administration building to express their anger over the decision to immediately oust Paterno.
More from GlobalPost: Penn State's Joe Paterno ousted immediately
Members of the crowd chanted: "Hello no, Joe won't go" and "We want Joe back."
The energy of the crowd was charged, and some students tried to topple street signs, knocked over trash cans and set off firecrackers, The New York Times reported.
The Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted his disappointment on the response to the firings.
"I wish rioting Penn State students were as concerned with abused children as with Paterno," he wrote.
And here is a Tumblr page showing front pages of newspapers in Pennsylvania after the news that Paterno was fired. The Reading Eagle says simply: "The Sad End."
Videos of the evening show the level of energy in the crowd. In this video, a crowd screams and yells before pushing over a local news van. (Warning: the video includes explosive language.) Once the van has been pushed to the ground, the crowd becomes even louder.
Penn State's trustees announced Wednesday that Paterno and school President Graham Spanier lost their jobs, effective immediately, amid a sex scandal case that has gripped the university.
Paterno was reportedly fired as a result of how he handled information regarding sexual accusations against his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was charged last weekend with sexually abusing eight boys between 1994 and 2009.
Paterno has been criticized for how he handled a report of an incident involving Sandusky and a 10-year-old boy in 2002. When Paterno heard of the incident, he immediately notified university administrators. He did not, however, contact the police, nor did he ban Sandusky from the football complex.